Best of the fortnight - 19 November 2021
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Each fortnight BISA Director, Juliet Dryden, scours the internet for IR-related content that might interest you. Here she brings you this week's best readings and podcasts to keep you up to date with what's happening around the world.
COP26
- Coal: why China and India are not the climate villains of Glasgow. Daniel Parsons and Martin Taylor writing in The Conversation
- COP26 and the radicalization of a generation. Adam Ramsey for Open Democracy
- The West botched COP26, then blamed China. Aaron Bastani in Novara Media
- Podcast: Climate Ambition vs Energy Reality - Climate, COP26 and the enormous challenges of the energy transition. David Runciman and Helen Thomson in TALKING POLITICS
- Podcast: The verdict on COP26. Reasons to be Cheerful with Ed Milliband and Geoff Lloyd, direct from Glasgow
- Podcast: a global green new deal must enshrine people’s right to move, and also to stay, says Asad Rehman of War on Want.
Global politics
- America, China and the tragedy of great power politics. John Mearsheimer in Foreign Affairs
- How strongmen cling to power. Authoritarian leaders are strengthening their grip on power. Can anyone topple them, asks Jeremy Cliffe in the New Statesman.
Europe
- Belarus manufactured a migrant crisis on Europe’s doorstep. Anne Applebaum in the Atlantic
- How Russia and Belarus weaponized migration into Poland. Tomasz Grzywaczewski in Foreign Policy
- Is the Belarus migrant crisis a “new type of war’? Sascha-Dominik Bachmann explains for The Conversation
- Putin weaponises human misery in this new proxy battle in Belarus. Edward Lucas in the Times
- Even Sweden doesn’t want migrants any more. How the country’s generous response to the 2015 migration crisis may have permanently dented its moral worldview. James Traub in Foreign Policy.
- Putin weaponises human misery in this new proxy battle in Belarus. Edward Lucas in the Times. Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books
- Podcast: the growing humanitarian crisis in Eastern Europe. EU confidential podcast for Politico.
China
- The pressure on children in Xi’s China: Wang Xiuying on Chinese education in the London Review of Books
- Podcast: Where is China heading. David Runciman and Helen Thomson in conversation with Cindy Yu on TALKiNG POLITICS
- Podcast: The Sunday Debate. Nathan Law, Alan Mendoza, Shirley Yu and Vince Cable debate whether it is time to treat China like an adversary and not a partner. Moderated for Intelligence Squared by Manveen Rana.
Asia and Middle East
- Japan: pressure from populist right to scrap peace constitution after 75 years. Ra Mason in the Conversation
- What apartheid means for Israel. Tareq Barconi in The New York Review of Books
- Podcast: How the US hid a daily airstrike on women and children in Syria. NY Times daily podcast
- The rebuilding of Raqqa. How the US and partners should work towards long-term stability in Syria’s north East International Crisis Group report
- Reflections on the 2013 Egyptian revolution. Yasmine El Rashidi in the New York Review of Books
- Tom Segev’s biography of David Ben-Gurion depicts a man who intended to become a Zionist Lenin but ended up “an Israeli King Lear. Assaf Sharon writing in the New York Review of Books
- Raja Shehadeh on the Israeli government smear of Palestinian human rights organisations. New York Review of books
- A nuclear Iran. Why the world cannot give up on diplomacy. Eric Brewer in Foreign Policy
- A famous Lebanese TV host enrages Saudi Arabia. Abbie Cheeseman for the New Statesman
Africa
- Can Ethiopia survive? Nic Cheeseman and Yohannes Woldemariam for Foreign Affairs
- A blueprint for peace in Ethiopia. Adem K Abebe in Foreign Policy
- Mediators step up Ethiopia ceasefire bid as aid efforts flounder. Maria Gerth-Niculescu for The New Humanitarian
- War and memory in France and Algeria: 60 years after the end of the Algerian War of Independence, both sides struggle with reconciliation. Alice Kaplan writes in the New York Review of Books
- State violence and impunity in Uganda. Liam Taylor for Foreign Policy
- Sudan: How strong in the civilian opposition to the military coup? Paul Jackson in the Conversation.
South America
- Nicaragua: former revolutionary Daniel Ortega now resembles the dictator he helped to overthrow. Eline van Ommen.
Others
- British perspectives on decolonization. Neal Ascherson writing in the London Review of Books
- From the silk road to the information superhighway. Peter Frankopan on connected worlds through history in Engelsberg Ideas
- Afghanistan and the delusions of maximalism. Rory Stewart in Foreign Affairs.
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